The variety of options for customer marketing and engagement ranging from social media to SEO to email marketing to online advertising can be overwhelming. As a result, some of the most common online marketing questions I hear from client side marketers revolve around, “How to decide which tactics are best?”

Answering that question starts with a clear understanding of goals, customers and a flexible online marketing strategy that assembles the right mix of tactics and measurement practices. Most companies are looking for more customers and to retain those they have, but the question is,

“How to acquire and engage customers more efficiently, more effectively?”

A big part of the answer is through the intersection of social media, SEO and content marketing. If Social Media and SEO fit together like peanut butter and jelly then content is the bread that holds them together. Content is a crucial part of a social media strategy and therefore an understanding of customer-centric social content is essential.

Consumers are not interested in traditional interruptive marketing. They want to be educated and their behaviors for information discovery, consumption and sharing have changed. B2B an B2C customers alike expect to find solutions via search. They also expect to interact with what they find via search.

Consumers expect content from brands. They expect ease of discovery (via search or social), the ability to interact with and socially share content and to interact with others with similar interests (social networking). These aren’t “nice to haves” anymore, they’re expected.

Most corporate marketing is structured to create content around products & services vs. becoming a publisher. As a result, the idea of implementing a content marketing program can seem foreign. However, the abundance of publishing tools and platforms now makes it possible for companies to create content and media that rivals some news organizations.

Content fuels customer engagement at all stages of the customer life cycle from top of funnel to ongoing relationship. Content can educate customers about your products and services. It can help educate about the buying process and how to get the most out of the purchase. It can continue to reinforce the relationship and inspire renewals, upgrades and referrals.

The challenge is for companies to rethink their content marketing strategy and incorporate Social Media and SEO in order to fulfill customer expectations for ease of discovery, consumption and sharing. On top of that, content must educate and make it easy to follow a logical conclusion to buy. The companies that do those things best, will win the incredibly competitive online marketing race we’re in.

I’ll be talking about this topic today at SES Accelerator in San Diego, providing specific guidelines for companies that want to leverage the most effective tactics for customer acquisition and engagement through search, social and content marketing. If you don’t catch me there, I’ll be discussing similar topics “Content Optimisation & Integrated Online Marketing” at SES London in a few weeks. I hope to see you there.

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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@LeeOdden is the CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of Online Marketing Blog. Cited for his expertise by The Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, he's the author of the book Optimize and presents internationally on integrated content, search, social media and influencer marketing. When not at conferences, consulting, or working with his talented team, he's likely on a beach somewhere doing absolutely nothing.

“Consumers are not interested in traditional interruptive marketing. They want to be educated and their behaviors for information discovery, consumption and sharing have changed”.

I couldn’t agree more. Consumers value utility content now more than ever. Let’s not try to tell them what to do/think/feel like traditional interuptive marketing, but rather provide utility content and information that addresses their real needs (whether that’s entertainment, education, etc…).

If you are an online business owner and don’t have a content marketing strategy in place for your business, then you will be very limited on what you will be able to do in terms of scaling up your business.

I just wanted to take a moment and let you know how helpful that your advice has been. Your site is full of fantastcic information. Thank you very much and keep up the good work!Regular reader, first time commentor…Thomas FrancoisMarketing DirectorWeb Price Right

Content is such a huge part of anyone’s marketing strategy. And it should not be written by just anyone. If you are great at it, perfect, but if not, hire someone who is, because once content is on the net, it is always there. Better to do it right the first time around.

Content marketing is an extremely important part of business these days. I like what Storch Kirill commented on about the direction content marketing is going…apps. I know that I’ve been using a content marketing strategy since the beginning of my online business days and it’s a killer campaign to use.

I am just starting to get into App creation since I recently got one of these smart phones. It makes the content marketing strategies even easier to apply at anytime anywhere!

This is great stuff and completely concurrent with a book I am reading by David Meerman Scott, “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”. Scott stresses CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT, think like a publisher… and how true it is. Consumers are not foolish, they know what they want and marketers must spend less time trying to sell and more time providing useful information for the intelligent consumer, creating dialogue, and ultimately value for the consumer! great post Lee:)

OK thanks will do, also you might want to have a look at theremarketables.com – our strategic marketing class here at JBU have a blog where we throw out ideas and remark on issues such as this and surely would benefit from your input!!!

First I would like to say that I really enjoyed reading this comment, I agree and it opened my eyes to things I haven’t thought about. As technology is growing quickly each year, it is important for companies to stay up to date with their social media. Social media is becoming a way of life. Also, I agree when Lee stated, “Content fuels customer engagement at all stages of the customer life cycle from top of funnel to ongoing relationship. Content can educate customers about your products and services.” Content is everything in marketing strategies. Content should be unique and be able to appeal to your consumers.

This post is very relevant to the type of marketing that should be utilized today. Generic newsletters and contests are not enough to keep consumers interested in a company. Content keeps consumers coming back to a website. Old school marketing might interrupt what the consumer is doing and ends up as an annoyance. Content based marketing focuses on what the consumer needs, and, as you said, can even educate the consumer.

Great tips and advice offering clarity on value-driven content for your website. Good content that offers valuable information and education for consumers will keep them engaged and coming back for more. Plus keeping the content updated on a regular basis will keep the site interesting and alive. It is the key marketing strategy for success in today’s online business world. Linda Kay Holden

Excellent post. One key takeaway here is not content per se, but relevant content. Thank you for pointing out that consumers want to be “educated”, they don’t want to be “sold.” An Achilles heel for many leading manufacturers is poor product detail page content. The product detail page is where the handshake happens, or doesn’t happen, between consumer and manufacturer. Best content practices at the product detail page — clean, concise, user-benefit-rich, non-marketspeak descriptions — pays for itself very quickly in increased conversion, increased off line sales, and decreased returns.

Just reading this points and tips, we learn new things everyday to keep our businesses up and running strong. Thanks for the time and effort you put into your content. As technology and times change, so must we to keep on our toes !Marketing Gal

Great post! The chart from emarketer is really interesting. It is also interesting to see traditional agencies struggle to become content marketers. Before the focus was on the advertising/selling message. Now the message itself has to be interesting/useful/entertaining. Fantastic insights!

Great post! When doing content marketing a business should decide which niche to focus on. It is important as it allows the business to communicate with people who could be turned into clients, and it helps the blogger be seen as an expert. This is really important for brand building – which is the foundation of ALL marketing strategies, not just online ones.

Content is the blood of internet, people are looking for information or solution to solve their problem. It does bring you a lot of benefits!! Thanks for the sharing. I would like to share one post that explaining why content is the most important element for your blog: